The invention relates to a basket for a self-service store shopping cart.
Conventionally, a cart used in self-service stores comprises a chassis, equipped with wheels, which supports a basket.
This basket is formed from wires that are shaped, and in particular, welded to one another so as to delimit a bottom, a front wall, a rear wall and the two left and right side walls of the basket.
In order to allow the carts to nest inside one another, particularly in order to store them behind one other, the basket has a cross-section that, from the front wall to the rear wall, steadily increases.
Thus, from the front wall, the two side walls diverge and increase in height, and the bottom descends toward the rear.
Thus, seen from above, the basket has the shape of an isosceles trapezoid, the large base of which is formed by the rear wall.
Seen from the side, the basket also has a trapezoidal shape.
Such a shape is comparable to a truncated pyramid.
The top part of the rear wall is articulated so that the front end of a second cart coming into contact with the rear wall of this cart progressively swings this rear wall toward the front, thus allowing the nesting of the carts.
Arrangements for the nesting of the chassis are also used.
Nowadays, many self-service stores offer three sizes of carts; thus, the user chooses the cart he thinks is best adapted to his current needs.
The carts must be arranged by size, which is a limitation for the users.
Since it is not unusual for the choice of a small cart to prove inappropriate, carts having a variable basket volume have been made.
To modify a cart""s capacity, it is known to equip its front face with an additional basket.
The latter is, for example, pivot-mounted around an axis of rotation.
Such a solution is not very practical to use.
The subject of the invention is a basket for a self-service store shopping cart, which basket, of variable volume, comprises a bottom, a front wall, a rear wall, and two left and right side walls, with a vertical cross-section that, from the front wall to the rear wall, increases along the two main axes, this basket comprising two parts, a fixed rear part and a movable front part, this basket being characterized in that the front part comprises:
a lower wall formed essentially of slender elements which, extending along the longitudinal axis of the basket, which cooperate via means for translational guidance along the longitudinal axis A of the basket with the bottom of the rear part of the basket,
continuing this lower wall so as to extend in the plane of the front wall, a support bearing the means for translational guidance along a horizontal axis C parallel to the front wall,
slender elements forming two lateral sides, each parallel to a side wall of the rear part, which have their so-called proximal ends guided in translation with the side wall in question, and their other, so-called distal ends bent in the plane of the front wall so as to cooperate with the translational guide means borne by the support, thereby forming the front wall.